I’ve been in limbo for the past week just waiting for more blood work results. My beta hCG is still hanging in there at really low levels, so I’ve decided, based on my doctor’s recommendation and hours of research, to move forward with a D&C. It’s scheduled for this Friday, November 9th.

There’s kind of a standing g joke in my family that it should be my goal to have surgery in every hospital in Jacksonville that will have me (meaning NOT counting the children’s hospital), and sadly, I’m well on my way. After Friday I will have had surgery in at least one branch of each hospital in Jacksonville except for Shands, which I plan to stay as far away from as possible. I’ve been to Memorial twice, Baptist South once, Baptist Beaches twice, Orange Park Medical Center once. Friday I can add St. Vincents to my list. Crazy.

I’m obviously extremely unhappy about the course of events the past couple months, and I’ve been thinking a lot about the D&C. I know not everyone feels the same way about this type of procedure, and all I can say is that you have no right to judge until you’ve experienced this difficult decision for yourself. I’m not terminating a viable pregnancy. I don’t take this decision lightly. We’ve spent over $25,000 trying to get pregnant so far. What’s inside me is not growing at all. There’s no heartbeat and it’s still too small, at 8 weeks, to be seen on an ultrasound. We can’t move forward with a frozen embryo transfer until my hCG levels go back down to 0, and the D&C will remove whatever’s keeping my hCG levels from going back down.

The good news that came out of this is that they’re doing a workup for recurrent miscarriage, which will either find a problem we can address or put my mind at ease if nothing’s wrong. If nothing’s wrong in that department it means I’m just really unlucky, which seems par for the course anyway. Does that sound negative? I’m feeling a little negative.

On a side note, if you haven’t voted yet, I strongly urge you to research the President’s stance on reproductive issues and compare them to Romney’s and Ryan’s views before you vote. Pay close attention to Ryan’s views on personhood and his Sanctity of Human Life Act. The act has a pretty name and sounds nice, but think about what it means for D&Cs, ectopic pregnancy, and IVF.

Some of you might be wondering how a miscarriage could ever be good news. when you’re actually trying to have a baby, but the truth is, it CAN be good news.

When I thought I needed a D&C, for example. And now it looks like I don’t.

My hCG levels have been absolutely dismal for how far along I was. First was 23, then 31 three days later, then 35 four day later, then 44 six days later. 44 at six weeks is so low, I couldn’t even find anything near that low in all my online research. Even people talking about how their levels were really low and they were so worried…their levels were at least in the several hundred range. My doubling rate was 14 days when it should have been 72 hours.

So anyway, it was looking like time for a D&C. Obviously extremely unhappy with the prospect, but I clearly had a very abnormal pregnancy going on that just wouldn’t quit. This didn’t make the decision to have a D&C easy, though.

I’ve been waiting for the doctor’s office to call and set up a time for the procedure. While I was waiting today things started to happen that indicated to me that a D&C was maybe not necessary and that things were going to take care of themselves without medical intervention.The end result was unavoidable, but I’m relieved I didn’t have to make that type of decision this time around. I get to play the waiting game a bit more now, and see if it turns into a full-on miscarriage, which is the best I can hope for now with this clearly non-viable pregnancy.

This pregnancy was unplanned, unexpected, and it’s made me doubt every decision I’ve made regarding infertility so far. Do I really need IVF? Can we do it on our own? Is there an autoimmune component here that I’m not aware of?

I have absolutely no idea. I’ll be very interested to hear my RE’s take on these events when I meet with him next month.

I’ve been waiting for the doctor’s office to call me so we can set up a D&C. Imagine my surprise when I answered the phone this morning and it was my RE himself! I’ve been seeing him for three years and I think he’s only called me a couple times ever. Anyway, I was happy he called because I got to ask him questions about the procedure instead of asking the nurses. The nurses are fine with general info, but don’t always get very specific. My RE was able to address my concerns about potential for infections and adhesions, and discuss plans for a biopsy to look for potential autoimmune problems.

He also mentioned the possibility of an ectopic. Since I only have one ovary and tube, I obviously want to find out ASAP whether it’s ectopic and take care of it immediately. Since my numbers are so low it seems unlikely to rupture the tube in the near future, and at this point I’d just need to have the shot and not a tube removal.

I’m unhappy about this outcome, of course, but I’m glad about the opportunity to find out if I have an autoimmune issue. If it is a problem then we can address it, and if it’s not the problem then it’s one less thing to worry about.

My numbers went up again but only slightly. I didn’t even ask for the numbers. I didn’t care. It doesn’t matter.

The doctor’s office will call probably tomorrow to schedule a D&C for sometime by the end of next week.

I’m not surprised at the outcome at all. I am a little surprised that I need a D&C though. With such low and slow numbers I expected it to take care of itself, but the embryo just wants to stick around. So, I’m not really sure how I feel about a D&C. I feel a little uneasy about it, to be honest.

Still just waiting around for my blood work coming up on Tuesday. I miscarried at this exact point last time. Five weeks and five days. No indication that it’s happening anytime soon, which surprises me because of the low numbers. I’m obviously curious about what the results will be Tuesday, but I can’t even make a good guess.

It’s strange; I missed the two-week wait this time because we weren’t even trying, but looks like I’m making up for it now. I took my positive pregnancy test 15 days ago, and there you have it. A two-week wait.

Did some yard work today; I tried not to overdo it. It had to be done though, because the backyard was like a jungle. I let the husband do all the hard stuff.

At least the rest of today, and tomorrow, should go by quickly. Waiting for the phone call with the results the day of the appointment is the hardest. Always feels like forever, and I can never concentrate on anything else.

My clinic has an RE and two IVF nurses. The nurses handle most of the usual questions and all that, and that’s who I call or email to ask questions. However, I’ve noticed quite the difference between the two nurses my RE has. They are both quite nice, but one is much more willing to talk than the other. The one who doesn’t want to talk as much also seems lots more conservative in her answers. Conservative Nurse called me with Tuesdays results and she said the plan is to continue testing until the number goes back down. Sounds pretty obvious to me what she thinks. However, I emailed Less-Conservative Nurse to ask about immune problems and stuff like that, and she called me the next day and talked about that with me. However, something kept nagging at me about how she was talking about things with me. So to clarify what she thought I emailed her and left her a message to call me because I wanted to know if I was supposed to operate on the assumption it’s a viable pregnancy or a non-viable pregnancy. She says still viable for now and wait until Tuesday.

This is what I mean about the hope thing. It’s dangerous.

By the way, I’m 5 weeks and 3 days pregnant today. Or something near that.

Most people have heard of the phrase “a little pregnant,” and they usually poke fun at it. Is it possible to be a little pregnant? People tend to think either you are or you aren’t.

Let me be the first to tell you: it’s entirely possible to be a little pregnant. I’ve done it once, and I’m doing it again right this very second.

Here’s how I define “a little pregnant”: you’re pregnant but your hCG and progesterone levels are really low and not rising as they would during a viable pregnancy. Every piece of information you have indicates a non-viable pregnancy, yet you hold on to an irrational hope that you’re the exception and it might actually pan out.

Obviously I got my blood work back the other day. I really didn’t feel like posting that day, or the next day or the next day. But I’m ready now. My first beta was 23. That was a week ago Tuesday (today’s Friday). Last Friday it was 31. Tuesday (a week after the first one) it was only 35. It should have been at least 100-200 (a very conservative estimate from my doctor).

What does one do with this information?

Well, pretty much nothing. I just get to wait. I told the doctor’s office I didn’t want to do more than one more blood test since they think my numbers will go down, thus indicating miscarriage occurred. They think that should happen by Monday, so I’m going in for one more blood draw Tuesday.

This whole thing is a complete disaster. Aside from the obvious disappointment of again not having a successful pregnancy, two other things aren’t happening either. Remember, we conceived on our own this time, totally unintentionally. I just miscarried last month after IVF. After the miscarriage I decided we needed a little vacation, so we were going to go to Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios for a couple days. Well, once I found out I was pregnant again we obviously couldn’t do it, so we didn’t make the plans. Now I can go, probably, but it’s too late for my husband to get time off work, and he works six days a week for the next two weeks, so we can’t even fit in a little weekend trip down there. On top of that, we had planned a frozen embryo transfer for December. In order to prepare I needed to start some drugs yesterday, but since I’m technically pregnant, I’m not allowed to start them yet, and that means I missed the window for a December transfer.

And now my RE wants to do a reconsult with me to discuss causes of recurring miscarriage. That isn’t until next month, and I might even miss the window for a January transfer too. After I got my numbers back Tuesday, I expressed my concern over a possible immune issue causing me to miscarry. My RE suggested a possible problem with antibodies in my bloodstream producing hCG that shows up in blood work but won’t on a HPT, so he told me to take a HPT and see if it was positive. If it was negative, then I had an antibody issue of some kind. However, it was positive, so we can cross that off the list. It was really mean to make me take a HPT and see the PREGNANT result on the digital test, though.

So anyway, that’s where we are. I’m stuck here wondering if I should live my life as usual or not. All indicators point to things not working out, and I feel guilty for wishing I could just move forward, but I also can’t shake that tin bit of hope off. Maybe it will work out. But probably not. But maybe.

I started this blog a couple weeks ago, planning to write about my fertility journey thus far. I planned to make my first entry about my most recent IVF cycle, the one that ended in a miscarriage on September 12th. I was going to write about my preparations for a frozen embryo transfer scheduled for December, and I was going to move my blog forward from there.

That was the plan, but while I mulled over how to weave the past, present, and future together for my first post, I got some shocking news. Very shocking news, considering my infertility specialist told me I had a less than 1% chance of conceiving on my own.

I’m four weeks and six days pregnant.

Don’t get excited yet. The hCG numbers aren’t looking too promising. A woman under the care of an infertility doctor get blood tests every other day in early pregnancy to monitor whether the amount of hCG is progressing appropriately. Mine isn’t. My first number was 23, which is low, but not terrible. A rule of thumb for a good second number is doubling the first number in 48 hours. So a good number for me would have been about 46. It was 31. The third blood test will give the best indication whether this is a viable pregnancy, and that appointment is in less than eight hours.

I wasn’t going to write about this surprising turn of events yet, but it could drag out for another week or two, or maybe even turn into something and continue for nine more months. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I finally decided to write about it because October 15th is Pregnancy- and Infant-loss Awareness Day, and, as cheesy as it sounds, I figured it’d be appropriate.